Salei's widow: “I’d give up everything to have him back."

One of the most telling moments for Bethann Salei arrived the day she yelled at her two older children, unable to understand why they weren't more upset about losing their father, Ruslan.

“Why aren't you crying for your daddy?" she asked them in a raised voice. "Don't you love him?”

The next day, she apologized to Alexis, 6, and Aleksandro, 4. Then she made an appointment to see a therapist.

“They just want to be kids, you know?” she says now. "Kids grieve differently. They were dealing with it in their own way."

In her first public comments since Ruslan was killed in September in a plane crash in Russia, Bethann says she and the couple's three children are "doing OK." She's angry, confused and still trying to accept the death of her husband, who, in his nine seasons with the Ducks, became one of the franchise's most popular players.

Salei, who was 37, was a first-round draft pick by the Ducks out of Belarus in 1996. He was here until he signed as a free agent with Florida in the summer of 2006. He spent last season with Detroit.

“I'd give up everything to have him back," says Bethann, who lives with the kids in the couple's home in Newport Beach. "I'd live in Belarus, if I had to. We don't need all this stuff. We should be together. We'd all be so much happier.”

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